Lessons Learned in Fighting Food Insecurity During the Pandemic

by Dicky Dikamba, Executive Director CANAVUA

CANAVUA had been working to fight food insecurity for over a decade when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Week after week, our staff welcomed and registered new clients, and we could always keep up with demand.

Then came the tsunami: workers laid off due to stay-at-home mandates, runaway inflation, negative oil prices and a plummeting stock market. We began to meet more families than ever before who struggled to put food on the table. We also gained a heightened awareness of the anxieties of privation – the human cost of food insecurity.

Our client demographics began to change, as well. CANVAUA is, first and foremost, a Francophone organization. Our service is bilingual, but we work in the heart of Edmonton’s French-speaking community. In 2020, however, we experienced a surge of clients, mostly English-speaking. Like Canada, our organization is a hub of people of all languages, origins and backgrounds.

CANAVUA stands for “Canadian Volunteers United in Action.” Our primary mandate is to promote and enhance volunteering in the community, and we do so, in part, by offering volunteer-run programs and services designed to meet people’s most fundamental needs, including food security. And did Canadians ever rise to the challenge when the pandemic hit! In 2020, we recruited a record number of new volunteers, in large part online.

By autumn of that year, we unveiled our “community food truck” to serve free, hot, healthy and culturally appropriate meals to our diverse clientele. This was the culmination of planning throughout the summer months. Every week, volunteers gathered at our truck to deliver hot meals around the city. Drivers also distributed food bank hampers to permit social distancing.

Food is a powerful way to bring people together. As clients benefited from our program, news of our services spread through word of mouth, and our impact snowballed exponentially! Many of our clients wished to give back to the communities themselves and became dedicated volunteers.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the generosity of our partners: the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights, SheGlows CWSSA, Community Food Centres Canada, Edmonton’s Food Bank, Leftovers Foundation, Second Harvest, the Government of Canada, Tropicana, ATB Financial and the Canadian Red Cross, to name but a few! We thank them from the bottom of our hearts.

And, of course, our volunteers – your efforts are appreciated by more people than we could ever count.

Today, in 2022, challenges still abound: skyrocketing inflation has made groceries unaffordable to thousands of working families. So what lessons have we learned that we can pass on to other stakeholders?

Firstly, funding is paramount: without government support, we could not keep up with demand.

Secondly, food insecurity continues to grow, not shrink. The economic consequences of the pandemic will be felt for many years to come. Even when the virus recedes, we must not curtail our organizational responses prematurely.

And, lastly, the power of collaboration! Only by working together can we multiply our efforts synergistically. I hope, for one, that the partnerships we’ve forged during the pandemic will endure for many years to come.